Carrying Water for Islam's Violent Teachings (Part 2)
Why so many people in the West instinctively reach for the 'Nothing to do with Islam' response
Please Note: The is the second of a two-part long form article series. Please check out the first instalment before continuing (if you have not read it yet).
A major part of my work is to challenge the idea that there is no link between Islam and acts of violence committed in its name. This is in response to the ‘Nothing to do with Islam’ response that we invariably get from such quarters when suck attacks occur. This is the first of two long-form articles that seeks to explain the “Nothing to do with Islam” phenomenon. It is, more than likely, inevitable that I will be treading on some toes along the way, but please understand that this was not written to score political hits, but as an attempt to come to terms with the puzzling fact that many people in the West will tie themselves into knots to come up with ways to ‘get Islam off the hook’.
With this in mind, I offer what I regard as the ten (five in the previous article and five in this one) most significant reasons behind the impulse to deny any link whatsoever between Islam and violence committed in its name.
6. Political Correctness
I could have given this section many different headings, but perhaps political correctness (or PC) best encapsulates the dynamic that I am trying to describe. In essence, political correctness can be described as the idea that the expression of certain positions is quite literally “beyond the pale” because disadvantaged or minority groups must be protected from ideas that could offend them. This may, in some cases, represent a worthy ideal (e.g., in the case of race where people have no choice whatsoever over their skin color). The problem, however, is that the protective net of PC has progressively been widened from the initial impulse to come to the aid of vulnerable individuals.
Political correctness, as it has developed in recent years, represents an attempt (most often by those on the “progressive” side of politics) to claim a kind of untouchable status for some ideas and ideologies. For a variety of reasons, Islam has been invited to shelter under the cover of Western political correctness and anyone who dares to question it will inevitably feel the full force of attempts to demonize (e.g., by critics being called “hater”, “bigot” or “Islamophobe”) and censor any criticism of it. I am constantly amazed about how people who would normally claim that “religion is the opium of the people” will immediately jump to the defense of Islam whenever it is questioned. On one memorable occasion, a person who proudly identifies himself as “Marxist/Atheist/Anarchist” on his Facebook profile even sent me a message to inform me that he has referred an article of mine (questioning the accurate transmission of the Qur’an) to the Human Rights Commission. In other words, in his mind (and there are many like him), any criticism of Islam whatsoever, including a technical analysis of its theological claims, is regarded as completely unacceptable.
Islam in the West certainly enjoys a significant advantage in being shielded from criticism by “PC Cover”, but how did it come to this? How did the progressive side of politics, traditionally the champions of freedom of conscience, gay rights, and women’s rights, become the guardians of an ideology whose central text commands forced conversion (Qur’an 8:39), wife-beating (Qur’an 4:34) and the punishment of homosexuals (Qur’an 4:1)? Here are some possible explanations:
Loss of cultural confidence. Fully analyzing the attitude of Westerners towards their own culture will be a vast undertaking that falls beyond the scope of these articles. It is fair to say, however, that many in the West have come to the point where they regard Western culture as essentially corrupt and not worth defending. The flip side of this is obviously that non-Western cultures are elevated to a position of superiority in the minds of many – a trend that Islam certainly benefits from. Self-loathing Western media outlets regularly portray aspects of Islamic culture as everything the West should aspire to be while studiously explaining away the troubling bits. Many Westerners have become so accustomed to denigrating and underestimating the value of their own civilization that the very idea of claiming that one culture or civilization is superior to another is viewed as being the ultimate politically correct heresy. Yet, we only have to apply what I call the “immigration queue test” to see that people around the world evaluate civilizations every single day and that they come to certain definite conclusions. These conclusions are most definitely not the ones that our media and elites are promoting. If Islamic civilization was indeed so superior, we would have expected to find long immigration queues in places like Washington, Sydney and London. Queues made up of people seeking to permanently move to parts of the world (e.g., Pakistan or Iran) where public life is explicitly based on the values of Islamic civilization. Instead, it is in Islamabad and Tehran where we find the immigration queues snaking around whole city blocks. Many people in these lines have come to the conclusion that some in the West would regard as unthinkable, namely that the civilization created by the West is superior to the one created by Islam, and that they would rather live under the former.
The minority status of Western Muslims. Many Muslims are obviously part of minority communities in the West. Since one of the values of political correctness is the protection of minorities, many on the progressive side of politics rush to the defence of Muslim communities. Unfortunately, however, the nature and aims of this defence can very easily become confused. While there is certainly a legitimate place for protecting minorities against harassment and physical harm, many so-called “protectors” go much further than this by also attempting to protect Muslim minorities from offense on an ideological level. Within this context a questioning of the belief system of Muslims can very easily be seen as an attack on them as a community. This is probably the origin of the ridiculous notion, very common in some circles, that questioning Islam is a form of racism. However, protecting the ideological sensibilities of Muslims simply because they form a minority in the West betrays a very parochial view of the world. It is highly debatable whether the second-largest religion on earth (holding the adherence of some 1.3 billion people) needs the protection of well-meaning Westerners simply because it is followed by a minority of people in our societies.
Islam as an aid to subvert the current order. Many on the hard-left have still not made their peace with the failure of Marxism and are actively seeking to foment the destruction of what they view as certain reactionary elements of Western society. If not through outright revolution, certainly through the imposition of a type of cultural Marxism. Within this context, any group that can potentially act as an ally in undermining the current order is welcomed with open arms, no matter what their underlying ideology is. The well-publicized antipathy of many Muslims towards Western culture, therefore, means that hard-line Muslim groups have been co-opted into the radical left’s struggle on the basis of “My enemy’s enemy is my friend”. We have, thus, seen the emergence of what might be termed a powerful Islamist-Leftist alliance. Within this informal alliance, the undermining of the current order of the West is of such paramount importance that both sides seem willing to betray their core convictions. For the Islamists, it means partnering with often hard-drinking, loose-living atheists. For the hard-left (including some supposedly feminist groups), it means throwing gay and women’s rights under the bus. It also means that the hard-left is required to abandon the ideal of free speech as they frantically try to clamp down on any criticism of Islam through the censorship techniques of political correctness. In doing this, they ironically fulfil the role of what one of their ideological heroes, Vladimir Lenin, called “useful idiots.” Just how idiotic and short-sighted their behaviour is can easily be ascertained by studying the fates of leftist movements after successful Islamic revolutions.
Taken together, the factors listed above (loss of cultural confidence, the status of Muslims as members of a minority and the belief of some that Islam can assist in subverting the current social order) combine to exert a powerful “politically correct” protective influence over Islam in the West. As noted, this is not merely focused on protecting individual Muslims from harassment or physical harm (a perfectly legitimate goal) but extends to attempts to freeze out all views that could be regarded as critical of Islam in any way.
7. Fear
I would venture to suggest that there are many people in the West who have made statements about the supposed peacefulness of Islam while in their heart-of-hearts they knew that these statements are not factually correct. They made these statements, however, because they feared a variety of repercussions if they said anything else. At its most basic level, the fear associated with asking hard questions about Islam can be seen in the chilling effects of politically correct efforts to demonize any and all criticism of Islam. People have come to understand that being labelled an “Islamophobe” could, in many cases, mean the end of careers, political prospects or social respectability. So, they simply bury their misgivings and repeat the politically correct orthodoxy that “Islam is a religion of peace”.
In some parts of the Western world, the fear associated with criticism of Islam is not just confined to the informal (though, highly effective) censorship imposed by the forces of political correctness. In certain countries we are now at a stage where it is possible to be formally prosecuted for critical statements about Islam. The legal basis of such prosecutions can often be found in so-called “anti-hate speech” or “anti-religious vilification” laws that have made their way onto the statute books of several Western jurisdictions. In many cases, these laws were promulgated with the enthusiastic backing of Muslim communities who rightly saw that they could eventually be used against critics of Islam.
In two of the most famous cases, two Christian pastors in the Australian state of Victoria were tried before a tribunal because of some critical statements that they made at a seminar on Islam. In another, the Canadian publisher Ezra Levant was summoned to appear before a tribunal in the province of Alberta. In neither of these cases was there any hint of exhortations to violence or vilification of individual Muslims based on their religion (the ostensible purpose of the legislation was to protect Muslim communities against such things), but rather a thoroughgoing critique of Islamic teachings. Yet, it was enough to land the two pastors and Mr. Levant in serious legal trouble. Thankfully, sense prevailed in both cases and the prosecutions were ultimately unsuccessful, but these victories still came at a massive cost in terms of time, money and personal stress. In light of this, it is not surprising that some people prefer to keep their heads down and not say anything that can be construed as even mildly critical of Islam.
Lastly, there is also the fact that many people fear for their physical safety if they should criticize Islam. Many Muslim groups in the West are on record as saying that they will seek to meet statements unfavorable to Islam with murderous violence. This is quite an ironic position to take as it can be summarized with “Say Islam is peaceful, or we kill you!”
Unfortunately, some of the warnings to vocal critics of Islam to cease their activities or face the consequences turned out not to have been idle threats at all. The Dutch filmmaker and fierce critic of Islam, Theo Van Gogh, was stabbed to death by a Muslim of Moroccan descent, Mohammed Bouyeri. Bouyeri stated that he was executing the will of Allah by plunging his knife into Van Gogh. Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who drew a cartoon of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban in 2005, has been threatened with violence many times (he was, in fact, nearly killed when a Muslim man seeking revenge tried to break into his home with an ax). Westergaard (who died in July 2021) had to live his final years under constant police protection. And of course, there were also attacks in January 2015 against the Parisian satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for regularly publishing cartoons of Muhammad and pieces that were critical of Islam. Twelve people died at the Charlie Hebdo offices and 11 were wounded. In this atmosphere of menace, it is not difficult to understand the decision of many to not speak up against troubling aspects of Islamic teaching.